Title: Such a beautiful school - Christian Signol - book
Summary :
Becoming a teacher was the dream of many children in France immediately after the war. Ornella, for example, fought hard to get into the École Normale, but success was just around the corner and led her to her first position as a schoolteacher in Ségalières, a remote village in the highlands of the Lot region, in October 1954. There, she encountered hostility from the mayor, the priest, and the locals, who needed their children on the farms. A new position awaited her in Peyrignac, on the Causse, where she would share a class with Pierre, the son of a lord of the manor from Cahors. Between these two teachers from different backgrounds but who lived only for their profession, it was love at first sight, overshadowed only by the Algerian War. Over the years, with the school reforms, they will pursue their careers with the same passion until a ministerial decision transforms them into "school teachers" in 1989. The school of yesteryear, its smell of chalk and purple ink, its teachers heirs to the hussars of the Third Republic, respected by all, exemplary and devoted, this is what Christian Signol evokes with great emotion and truth in this beautiful novel which also relates half a century of the history of a French society, whose school symbolized success and hope for the future.
